Book Description

This book is the story of a journey through the disintegration of the “big story”. The big story is the one we live inside of, the one that gives us the certainties and continuities of our lives. The disintegration occurred in Sydney in the late 1960s, amid social and personal turmoil, and led to the narrator's flight to the country. He finds a place to settle, gives up books, begins to garden.

Gradually he reclaims the centre, and gradually he re-engages with society, although there is tumult in that too. But there is love, there is music, and there are visions of life with spirit and with ethics. The narrator talks his way through, remembering, recounting, rejecting, resolving. There are four parts to the story – Disintegration, Renewing, Onward and Reframing.

The book is the fourth book the author has written as part of National Novel Writing Month, where the project is to write a book of at least 50,000 words in one month.

From the back cover.....

There are many stories – the stories we hear from others, the stories that we make ourselves, and the stories we live inside of.

I have told stories that I felt needed to be told, about striving and letting go, about hurt and healing, about going and coming back, and about holding onto purpose. But all those stories depend on the continuities, and what transpires when the continuities begin to fail us?

This book is about the big story unravelling, the one that holds all the necessary certainties, the certainties I wanted and yet found wanting. I talk my way through, remembering, recounting, rejecting, resolving. Tell me there is method in this, because the days now seem to be singing and full of joy.

The parts

The story has four parts.

Part 1 is "The Disintegration". It finds the author leaving the city. Fleeing. But he finds a place to settle, in a valley that has walls of refuge. It is a place of retreat. It is good enough. He is telling this story as it happened, that memory returns to him after so long. He gives up books, he takes up gardening. He never stops thinking about the big story. But he ventures back in to a town, to a job, a tumultuous job that required him to learn the art of war. Books come back in, and music. Eventually there is a return to the city, wondering if it will be different.

Part 2 is "The Renewing". He says he is on a campaign to find the roots of the world tree. Writing about human resources and training in the day time, finding peace and joy in music. But he knows what he is finding in the stories, when his experiences turn into story. It is love, and morals. And some of the stories are in song.

Part 3 is "Onward". The author has to come back to the present, but he is called away again by Mu, the chanter who has been here before. Mu’s desire is to dance at the music festival, and we think he intends to stay, but he comes and is gone, with just a nod to the tawny frogmouth sitting in the tree.

Part 4 is "Reframing". The author is older. He is making principles. Now he knows that heaven and earth are working together. At the end, the story goes on. The energy flows in all directions.